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On 17/12/08 December I published this piece about the North Korean Arms detained in Thailand. I received the following comment, so in fairness I will publish the response in its entirety. It is unedited, an unverified, but if it comes from GT Group Limnitted, it suggests someone in the UK is behind SP Trading
Shimron Issachar
Ian Taylor said...
18 December 2009
SP Trading Limited – in reference to seized weapons in Thailand
GT Group Limited, Port Vila Vanuatu – We are a consulting company based in Vanuatu, providing various business and company incorporation services to professional clients internationally. We provide this service from Vanuatu, New Zealand, Cook Island, Samoa and other jurisdictions. Each jurisdiction has various requirements for due diligence and or identification of the beneficial owner or operator of the incorporated company.
GT Group Limited follows the due diligence and client identification requirements according to the laws of each jurisdiction from which it offers services. GT Group Limited is not responsible for the operation or activities of companies that it has incorporated. GT Group Limited may at times also supply a Nominee Director or Shareholder and in the case of SP Trading Limited, we can confirm that GT Group Limited has supplied such.
SP Trading Limited was incorporated by our New Zealand Agent the 22nd day of July, 2009 at the request of one of our professional clients based in the United Kingdom. The professional client met the due diligence requirements in place with regard to identification of the beneficial owner.
GT Group Limited confirms that it has no connection to the activities of SP Trading Limited and strongly emphasizes that it acted as an Incorporator and Registered Agent only.
All persons employed by, contracted by, or sub contracted by GT Group Limited in relation to the incorporation and Nominee Directorship and Nominee Shareholding of SP Trading Limited have no knowledge of the activities of SP Trading Limited and are in no way involved with the shipment of any items of any kind, at any location and by any means.
GT Group Limited has approached the New Zealand Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in a pro-active move to fully cooperate with any investigation in any jurisdiction in relation to SP Trading Limited or its beneficial owners. As of the issue of this press release, GT Group Limited has in no way been contacted by any authority.
Time: 1:00PM, Vanuatu Time.
Date: December 18, 2009
Location: Port Vila, Vanuatu.
Contact person: Ian Taylor by telephone (+61) 450955048.
Further Comments: No further comments will be made by any person other than the above appointed person and any attempt to obtain comments from any other employee, manager, director, agent or associates will be met with a “no comment” response.
END GT GROUP LIMITED MANAGEMENT STATEMENT
2:28 AM
Showing posts with label Islamists in Thailand. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Islamists in Thailand. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Viktor Bout' Arms Transport Caught in Tailand With North Korean Arms
12/17/09 10:53 AM EST BANGKOK — Thai authorities were acting on a tip from the United States when they seized tons of illicit weapons from a plane from North Korea, a senior official said Thursday.
The Ilyushin Il-76 transport plane was impounded Saturday in Bangkok during what officials said was a scheduled refueling stop. Thai authorities found a reported 35 tons of weaponry aboard it, all exported from North Korea in defiance of U.N. sanctions.
Speaking at a news conference, National Security Council chief Thawil Pliensri confirmed media reports that there had been U.S. assistance in the seizure, but gave no details.
He said that Thailand was waiting for advice from the United Nations on whether the weapons should be destroyed.
The U.N. sanctions — which ban North Korea from exporting any arms — were imposed in June after the reclusive communist regime conducted a nuclear test and test-fired missiles. They are aimed at derailing North Korea's nuclear weapons program, but also ban it from selling any conventional arms.
Thawil revealed little else new at his news conference, which seemed aimed at quashing some rumors. He denied that Thailand would receive a reward or bounty for the seizure, or that it was pressured to act, saying it took action "as a member of the world community."
He added, however, that Thailand would like to be compensated if possible by the U.N. for the cost of transporting the weapons, which were taken to an Air Force base in the nearby province of Nakhon Sawan.
It is still not known where the weapons — said to include
Shimron Letters on Twitter
The Ilyushin Il-76 transport plane was impounded Saturday in Bangkok during what officials said was a scheduled refueling stop. Thai authorities found a reported 35 tons of weaponry aboard it, all exported from North Korea in defiance of U.N. sanctions.
Speaking at a news conference, National Security Council chief Thawil Pliensri confirmed media reports that there had been U.S. assistance in the seizure, but gave no details.
He said that Thailand was waiting for advice from the United Nations on whether the weapons should be destroyed.
The U.N. sanctions — which ban North Korea from exporting any arms — were imposed in June after the reclusive communist regime conducted a nuclear test and test-fired missiles. They are aimed at derailing North Korea's nuclear weapons program, but also ban it from selling any conventional arms.
Thawil revealed little else new at his news conference, which seemed aimed at quashing some rumors. He denied that Thailand would receive a reward or bounty for the seizure, or that it was pressured to act, saying it took action "as a member of the world community."
He added, however, that Thailand would like to be compensated if possible by the U.N. for the cost of transporting the weapons, which were taken to an Air Force base in the nearby province of Nakhon Sawan.
It is still not known where the weapons — said to include
- explosives,
- rocket-propelled grenades
- components for surface-to-air missiles
- and other armaments — were to be delivered.
The plane's papers, which described its cargo as oil-drilling machinery, said the shipment was to be delivered to Sri Lanka.
Arms trade experts have speculated that the cargo may have been destined for conflict zones in Africa, Iran or Myanmar.
U.S. Treasury Department records show that the plane had previously been registered with firms controlled by suspected arms trafficker Russian Viktor Bout, who is currently being held in Thailand.
The U.S. is trying to extradite him on terrorism charges. On Wednesday, he denied any involvement with the plane, according to Russian news agency ITAR-Tass, accusing the media of trying to influence the decision in his extradition hearing.
The crew — four from Kazakhstan and one from Belarus — have been jailed on illegal arms possession charges.
The wife of Mikail Petukhov — the Belarussian identified in Thai court documents — said he had served in the Soviet military and afterward took whatever job he could find. Vera Petukhova said her husband never knows who he'll be working with before going out on a job. A friend of Petukhov, 54, added that he also never knows what he'll be transporting.
"All the containers are sealed, and the captain only gets the printout of what is supposed to be inside them. But what's inside, that's a question for the people who load it onto the plane at the pick-up point," said Vladimir Migol, who also served in the Soviet air force and noted that many ex-service men struggled to find work after being discharged. Migol said while crew members such as Petukhov would never knowingly transport weapons, they are all aware of the risk but are usually desperate for jobs.
The plane was registered to Air West, a cargo transport company in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry said this week that the plane was leased to New Zealand company SP Trading Ltd.
Authorities in New Zealand are investigating, a spokesman for its Foreign Ministry, James Funnell said Thursday.
"We have always been staunch supporters of the sanctions regime imposed against North Korea," Funnell told The Associated Press. "So we're very concerned by these allegations and are inquiring into them."
SP Trading is listed in the government's register of companies as having offices in Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, which names Lu Zhang as its director. The company's shares are held by nominee company VICAM (Auckland) Ltd. Listed phone numbers rang unanswered on Thursday.
Impoverished North Korea is believed to earn hundreds of millions of dollars every year by selling missiles, missile parts and other weapons to countries such as Iran, Syria and Myanmar.
Associated Press writer Simon Shuster contributed to this report from Kiev, Ukraine.
(This version CORRECTS that ITAR-Tass report was from Wednesday, not Thursday.)
The Rest @ the AP
Shimron Letters on Twitter
Friday, October 09, 2009
Viktor Bout, Arms Trafficker, May Be Released Soon
If Americans think we have problems with the recent disruption of a suspected terrorist cell in New York, they haven't seen anything yet.
An appellate court in Thailand appears primed to uphold a recent lower court ruling that will unleash Viktor Bout, universally known as the "Merchant of Death," back on the global community. To say that Bout is upset with the United States after spending more than a year in a Thai prison would be a gross understatement.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the National Security Council (NSC) and the Department of State, not to mention the United Nations, many other countries and several international human rights groups, had been tracking Bout for several years, and all believed he posed a formidable risk to our national security and the global community.
So it was no surprise when the NSC asked me, as the chief of operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 2007, to direct the agency's tradecraft at bringing Bout to justice. The NSC was impressed with the DEA's recent string of successes in apprehending a number of high-value terrorist-related suspects, all captured utilizing purely judicial methods - exactly what President Obama strongly advocates.
Bout, whose legendary character is the basis for the movie "Lord of War" and the subject of the highly successful book "Merchant of Death," has been held in prison since his arrest by Thai authorities. Bout, who many intelligence experts think is a former KGB agent, fell for an extraordinarily complex DEA undercover operation that lured him from Russia to Thailand for the sake of consummating a major arms deal with undercover DEA operatives, who he thought were representing the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
FARC, which is designated by the U.S., the European Union and many other nations as a terrorist organization, has also been labeled my most experts as the world's single-largest cocaine trafficking cartel. The DEA sting was closely coordinated with our intelligence community, as well as high-level officials of the same Thai justice system that could be turning this malevolent thug loose on a world that would be far safer if he were kept behind bars.
The evidence clearly reveals that Bout believed he was selling a massive quantity of AK-47 assault rifles, surface-to-air missiles and rocket-propelled grenades to FARC for use against U.S. personnel and interests. This latest event in Bout's shadowy existence adds yet another layer of intrigue onto the man who is responsible for facilitating terrorism, murder and genocide at levels unmatched by anyone else in recent time.
Bout exploded onto the international scene shortly after the breakup of the Soviet Union, when he effectively leveraged his high-level former Soviet military and intelligence contacts and pounced on a capitalistic opportunity to sell a limitless assortment of Soviet arms that had been stockpiled during the Cold War. I'm talking about everything from AK-47 assault rifles by the millions to such advanced heavy weapons as Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunships, tanks and Igla surface-to-air shoulder-fired missiles that can knock down commercial airliners as easily as a sawed-off shotgun could blast ducks in a barrel.
His clientele were the potpourri of modern-day scum: global terrorists, ruthless dictators, merciless drug kingpins and other transnational organized criminal groups. However, it is the mark that Bout left on Africa that qualifies him as the world's deadliest "shadow facilitator."
Bout flooded the continent with hundreds of thousands of AK-47s and other modern weaponry before his arrest. Those arms replaced machetes and other archaic weapons wielded by heavily exploited and drugged young boys, who made up the ranks of several insurgent groups, and instantly transformed them from random murderers into perverse, mindless killing machines operating with assembly-line efficiencies. A million or more innocent Africans were slaughtered.
The recent Thai lower-court ruling declared that Bout could not be prosecuted in Thailand because the country did not distinguish the FARC as a terrorist organization, nor did the court recognize the group as a "criminal organization," which is utterly ludicrous. Many nations do not agree with our country's list of designated terrorist organizations, but every responsible nation in the world recognizes FARC as an international organized crime powerhouse. And we did not ask Thailand to prosecute Bout; we simply asked that Thailand extradite him to the U.S., so we could prosecute on our own soil a treacherously dangerous man who is hell-bent on supporting terrorism directed at our country and mayhem throughout the world.
The arcane lower court decision came after a year's worth of judicial proceedings that strongly indicated the Thais would move to approve extradition. Many intelligence experts, as well as international human rights activists, think Thailand's judicial action is highly suspicious. One thing is for sure: the last thing Russia wants is Bout on American soil spilling his guts after getting a taste of American justice meted out in a federal courthouse.
Something else is certain: Treacherous men hold grudges. If the NSC thought Bout was a substantial threat to our national security before the DEA stung him hard, he will certainly be a greater danger once the Thai government unleashes him on the global community.
Michael A. Braun served as the assistant administrator and chief of operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for four years before retiring in October 2008, after 34 years in law enforcement.
The Rest @ The Washington Post
An appellate court in Thailand appears primed to uphold a recent lower court ruling that will unleash Viktor Bout, universally known as the "Merchant of Death," back on the global community. To say that Bout is upset with the United States after spending more than a year in a Thai prison would be a gross understatement.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the National Security Council (NSC) and the Department of State, not to mention the United Nations, many other countries and several international human rights groups, had been tracking Bout for several years, and all believed he posed a formidable risk to our national security and the global community.
So it was no surprise when the NSC asked me, as the chief of operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 2007, to direct the agency's tradecraft at bringing Bout to justice. The NSC was impressed with the DEA's recent string of successes in apprehending a number of high-value terrorist-related suspects, all captured utilizing purely judicial methods - exactly what President Obama strongly advocates.
Bout, whose legendary character is the basis for the movie "Lord of War" and the subject of the highly successful book "Merchant of Death," has been held in prison since his arrest by Thai authorities. Bout, who many intelligence experts think is a former KGB agent, fell for an extraordinarily complex DEA undercover operation that lured him from Russia to Thailand for the sake of consummating a major arms deal with undercover DEA operatives, who he thought were representing the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
FARC, which is designated by the U.S., the European Union and many other nations as a terrorist organization, has also been labeled my most experts as the world's single-largest cocaine trafficking cartel. The DEA sting was closely coordinated with our intelligence community, as well as high-level officials of the same Thai justice system that could be turning this malevolent thug loose on a world that would be far safer if he were kept behind bars.
The evidence clearly reveals that Bout believed he was selling a massive quantity of AK-47 assault rifles, surface-to-air missiles and rocket-propelled grenades to FARC for use against U.S. personnel and interests. This latest event in Bout's shadowy existence adds yet another layer of intrigue onto the man who is responsible for facilitating terrorism, murder and genocide at levels unmatched by anyone else in recent time.
Bout exploded onto the international scene shortly after the breakup of the Soviet Union, when he effectively leveraged his high-level former Soviet military and intelligence contacts and pounced on a capitalistic opportunity to sell a limitless assortment of Soviet arms that had been stockpiled during the Cold War. I'm talking about everything from AK-47 assault rifles by the millions to such advanced heavy weapons as Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunships, tanks and Igla surface-to-air shoulder-fired missiles that can knock down commercial airliners as easily as a sawed-off shotgun could blast ducks in a barrel.
His clientele were the potpourri of modern-day scum: global terrorists, ruthless dictators, merciless drug kingpins and other transnational organized criminal groups. However, it is the mark that Bout left on Africa that qualifies him as the world's deadliest "shadow facilitator."
Bout flooded the continent with hundreds of thousands of AK-47s and other modern weaponry before his arrest. Those arms replaced machetes and other archaic weapons wielded by heavily exploited and drugged young boys, who made up the ranks of several insurgent groups, and instantly transformed them from random murderers into perverse, mindless killing machines operating with assembly-line efficiencies. A million or more innocent Africans were slaughtered.
The recent Thai lower-court ruling declared that Bout could not be prosecuted in Thailand because the country did not distinguish the FARC as a terrorist organization, nor did the court recognize the group as a "criminal organization," which is utterly ludicrous. Many nations do not agree with our country's list of designated terrorist organizations, but every responsible nation in the world recognizes FARC as an international organized crime powerhouse. And we did not ask Thailand to prosecute Bout; we simply asked that Thailand extradite him to the U.S., so we could prosecute on our own soil a treacherously dangerous man who is hell-bent on supporting terrorism directed at our country and mayhem throughout the world.
The arcane lower court decision came after a year's worth of judicial proceedings that strongly indicated the Thais would move to approve extradition. Many intelligence experts, as well as international human rights activists, think Thailand's judicial action is highly suspicious. One thing is for sure: the last thing Russia wants is Bout on American soil spilling his guts after getting a taste of American justice meted out in a federal courthouse.
Something else is certain: Treacherous men hold grudges. If the NSC thought Bout was a substantial threat to our national security before the DEA stung him hard, he will certainly be a greater danger once the Thai government unleashes him on the global community.
Michael A. Braun served as the assistant administrator and chief of operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for four years before retiring in October 2008, after 34 years in law enforcement.
The Rest @ The Washington Post
Friday, June 19, 2009
Southern Thiland Islamist Rebellion - Update
There is a five year old islamsit rebellion among ethnic Malay in Southern Thailand. It is rooted in a three-decade old local rebellion.
Their current goals are unclear, except it operates as a secret society among the people, who "discipline" any of the locals that work for the Thai government or support it in any way.
This is just the kind of rebellion al Qaeda likes to assist, and they have.(Reuters Story below)
-Shimron Issachar
YALA, Thailand (Reuters) - When a gun appeared through an open window in her small wooden house, Patimoh Pohitaedaoh knew the insurgents had come to kill her.
She had already seen four family members shot dead in her village by shadowy assassins over the past five years.
Now, her time had come.
"They shot at me, I knew they would come after me," said Patimoh, a Muslim villager from Yala, one of three southernmost provinces plagued by five years of unrest.
"I ran to hide and defense volunteers heard the shots and chased the gunmen away. I was lucky to survive," she told Reuters.
Similar stories are told daily throughout the predominantly Muslim region bordering Malaysia, where nearly 3,500 people have been killed since 2004, among them teachers, soldiers, Imams and Buddhist monks.
The conflict remains shrouded in mystery, with no credible claims of responsibility for the bloodshed in a once independent Malay Muslim land with a history of rebellion to Buddhist Thai rule.
The violence adds to image problems that could affect foreign investment and tourism in Thailand, rocked by sporadic political turmoil and violence in other areas as well in recent years.
In the Muslim south, a place where fear and intimidation have become part of daily life, Patimoh, like most people here, is reluctant to speculate as to the identity of her attackers, or what they are fighting for.
"I didn't see them clearly -- no one knows who these people are," said Patimoh, 29.
"All I know is they are here in the villages, every day, all around us," she said.
TORN APART
Buddhist and Muslim families have been torn apart by the deadly violence, which has ranged from drive-by shootings and arson to powerful bombings and grisly beheadings.
Patimoh's younger brother, Samsudeen, a defense volunteer, elder brother Rohim, a village chief, brother-in-law Asif and sister Laila, a community leader, all paid a heavy price for working for the Thai state.
They were shot dead by gunmen on motorcycles who haunt the rustic villages of the jungle-clad region, silencing anyone deemed to be supporting the authorities.
Security forces are struggling to tackle the insurgency and say convictions of ethic Malay rebels are rare because witnesses are too scared to testify in the courts.
The failed attempt on Patimoh's life in Krong Pinang three weeks ago has forced her to move to the comparatively safer surroundings of Yala, the run-down provincial capital.
But she has vowed never to leave the deep south, where an armed ethno-nationalist struggle from three decades ago appears to have resurfaced.
"I no longer have ambition in my life, I just live day by day because I don't know what will happen to me," said Patimoh, who runs a support group for women and children affected by the violence.
"I can't turn my back on my family or my people, it would be selfish," she said, her eyes filling with tears.
"I still get death threats. I hear the words 'die, die, die', but I refuse to change my life or give in to those behind it."
The Rest @ Reuters
Their current goals are unclear, except it operates as a secret society among the people, who "discipline" any of the locals that work for the Thai government or support it in any way.
This is just the kind of rebellion al Qaeda likes to assist, and they have.(Reuters Story below)
-Shimron Issachar
YALA, Thailand (Reuters) - When a gun appeared through an open window in her small wooden house, Patimoh Pohitaedaoh knew the insurgents had come to kill her.
She had already seen four family members shot dead in her village by shadowy assassins over the past five years.
Now, her time had come.
"They shot at me, I knew they would come after me," said Patimoh, a Muslim villager from Yala, one of three southernmost provinces plagued by five years of unrest.
"I ran to hide and defense volunteers heard the shots and chased the gunmen away. I was lucky to survive," she told Reuters.
Similar stories are told daily throughout the predominantly Muslim region bordering Malaysia, where nearly 3,500 people have been killed since 2004, among them teachers, soldiers, Imams and Buddhist monks.
The conflict remains shrouded in mystery, with no credible claims of responsibility for the bloodshed in a once independent Malay Muslim land with a history of rebellion to Buddhist Thai rule.
The violence adds to image problems that could affect foreign investment and tourism in Thailand, rocked by sporadic political turmoil and violence in other areas as well in recent years.
In the Muslim south, a place where fear and intimidation have become part of daily life, Patimoh, like most people here, is reluctant to speculate as to the identity of her attackers, or what they are fighting for.
"I didn't see them clearly -- no one knows who these people are," said Patimoh, 29.
"All I know is they are here in the villages, every day, all around us," she said.
TORN APART
Buddhist and Muslim families have been torn apart by the deadly violence, which has ranged from drive-by shootings and arson to powerful bombings and grisly beheadings.
Patimoh's younger brother, Samsudeen, a defense volunteer, elder brother Rohim, a village chief, brother-in-law Asif and sister Laila, a community leader, all paid a heavy price for working for the Thai state.
They were shot dead by gunmen on motorcycles who haunt the rustic villages of the jungle-clad region, silencing anyone deemed to be supporting the authorities.
Security forces are struggling to tackle the insurgency and say convictions of ethic Malay rebels are rare because witnesses are too scared to testify in the courts.
The failed attempt on Patimoh's life in Krong Pinang three weeks ago has forced her to move to the comparatively safer surroundings of Yala, the run-down provincial capital.
But she has vowed never to leave the deep south, where an armed ethno-nationalist struggle from three decades ago appears to have resurfaced.
"I no longer have ambition in my life, I just live day by day because I don't know what will happen to me," said Patimoh, who runs a support group for women and children affected by the violence.
"I can't turn my back on my family or my people, it would be selfish," she said, her eyes filling with tears.
"I still get death threats. I hear the words 'die, die, die', but I refuse to change my life or give in to those behind it."
The Rest @ Reuters
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